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Tuesday, 25 June 2013

The Wrong Type of Snow

“The Wrong Type of Snow”

British Rail's Contribution to the English Language!

by

Gyan
C. A. Fernando

Cartoon by N Senthilkumaran

In
the winter of 1990-1991, when I was residing in Britain, there was a sudden
cold snap. A few inches of snow fell and the temperature dropped well below
zero. Nothing unusual but good old British Rail came to a grinding halt. (More: Click link at bottom)

At
this point, on the 11th of February 1991,British
Rail's Director of Operations Terry Worrall made the famous comment that "we
are having particular problems with the type of snow".

Despite
common knowledge that snow manifests itself in various forms, a British Rail
press release implied that this fact was hitherto unknown to BR management and
engineering staff.

“British
Rail blames the Wrong Type of Snow!”

The
London Evening Standard, a venerable London newspaper, picked up the story and
ran the headline saying “British Rail
blames the Wrong Type of Snow!”Since then, in the United
Kingdom, the phrase has become a byword for euphemistic and lame excuses.

The British
satirical magazine Private Eye ran a
spoof article in which they showed pictures of the “normal” kind of snow and
the “wrong” kind. This they did merely by printing two small photo-sized blank
white boxes labelled “Normal kind of snow” and “Wrong kind of snow”!

The
cold snap had been forecast and British Rail had claimed to be ready for the
coming snow.

Normally,
in Britain, the temperatures hovers around zero when it snows and the snow is
of a “wet” type and sticks together, the type of snow ideal for making
snowballs and snowmen! But that year, because of a sharp drop in temperature,
the snow was powdery and loose, and flew around like polystyrene beads.

As
the snow was not deep, snow ploughs were ineffective.

On electric
trains with integral motor cooling fans and downwards pointing air intakes, the
snow got sucked in, melted and short circuited the motors, bringing the trains
to a halt. The disruption lasted over a week.

Many
electric services had to be replaced by diesel haulage. Diesel electrics, which
have a central motor cooling blower with intakes placed well above the rails,
were not prone to this problem.

History
Repeats Itself

During
the December 2009 European snowfall, several Eurostar trains broke down in the
Channel Tunnel, trapping 2000 passengers in the dark; newspapers gleefully reported
it as the "wrong type of fluffy snow".

Footnote:
Sadly, British Rail, which provided a lot of amusement of this type over the years,
is no more. It was privatised in stages between 1994 and 1997.